


an ardent desire to be freed

by rustyshiv



Category: James Bond (Craig movies), James Bond (Movies), Skyfall (2012) - Fandom
Genre: Apocalypse, Desperation, Insanity, M/M, Suicide Idealization, mental breakdowns
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-30
Updated: 2014-03-30
Packaged: 2018-01-17 12:51:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,343
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1388338
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rustyshiv/pseuds/rustyshiv
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They weren't solar flares. But by then, nobody was caring much about anything except water.</p>
            </blockquote>





	an ardent desire to be freed

**Author's Note:**

> James Bond and Co. belong to Ian Fleming and the wonderful directors who transformed the books into stupendous movies.  
> Title is taken from _Anna Karenina_ by Tolstoy.  
>  This is a work of fiction based on a work of fiction; I own nothing.  
> I did not put archive warnings, but this fic does deal with mental breakdowns and suicide, among other darker things. So, if it is a trigger, then perhaps this is not for you.

"Of all the people to get stuck with. God must really hate me."

"Quartermaster."

"007."

**

If his life was a documentary, like the ones about the polar bears dying from global warming, he thought it would be titled something like this; Tonight on BBC1: Decrepit, Dying, and Diseased: God Has a Fucked Up Sense of Humour!

It's 2015, mother fuckers, said the newscasters in his ear, forever droning on and on and on and  _on_. Time to stay alive.

**

Q had fallen into the habit of watching the morning news from when he was a child. He would sit and eat his cocoa puff cereal from an old plastic bowl and watch some reporter with a bad goatee drone about the weather and war. He would always sound like he was announcing a spectacular fight: la _dies_ and  _gentle_ men! It's seven in the morning here in (dreary lousy wet) gorgeous  _Manchester_! Good morning!

He would eat his cereal and listen to the newscaster speak about terrible violence and deaths and sometimes he mentioned some local nine year old who won the science fair right before hitting Q right in the gut with horrid stories about gas prices and inflation. But don't worry, because little Susie McCormack won the fucking science award!

He stopped watching after George Bush the second was elected president for a second term, because, by god there were some tortures Q wouldn't subject himself to.

Many things had left Q: his mum and dad, his aunt, several boyfriends and girlfriends, his flatmate's cat from uni.

The voice of the newscaster stayed.

**

There was a silence, only punctuated by the sharpening of Bond's knife of a rock. He looked at the blade in contemplation. "Dogs travel in packs," he said with insouciance he possibly didn't feel. "When one gets sick, the others leave him behind."

And Bond looked at Q with dead eyes and a bright smile. Q felt vindictive pleasure in the face of this threat, so he smiled serenely even as he shivered violently.

"I may die first," he taunted. Flirting with death in more ways than one. "But at least I was the one who lost his mind last." Q wasn't sure about that; just like he wasn't sure what day it was or what temperature it was or where the next watering hole would be.

After that, Bond didn't talk to him.

**

He was listening to the morning news months before The Event, which was what people started calling it.

Others, more religious (and) or deranged, called it the Rapture.

He was listening to a different newscaster, this one was blonde and perky, tits stuffed so full of silicone it was a miracle she didn't tilt from the weight. She sounded like an excited Barbie during sex, all breathy tones.

Ladies and gentlemen, there's _ex_ citing (she let out something that sounded suspiciously like a whimper) confirmation of solar flares  _coming_ (lewd, the breathy sigh at that word. Where did she get trained, a strip club?) in the upcoming months.

She leaned down to look at her pages, her prepared script, and one plastic tit popped out to reveal half of the dusky pink areole of her nipple.

Really, this was worse than the MMA announcer George Bush reporter.

**

He had time, months, for preparation. So he took care of his electronics at home. Took care of the electronics at Q-branch. Saw agents off, brought agents home- although not always whole.

He had time, so much of it.

The newscaster stopped mentioning celebrity deaths as the heat climbed. Divorces from famous judges and the alleged mistress of the Prime Minister who died in Malaysia didn't matter.

Don't forget to walk out there protected from the sun, ladies and gentlemen! Superdrug is selling all sunscreen products half off! Get your coupons and wallets, it's a hot hot hot day out there!

The politics stopped. The religious debates stopped. It was almost a miracle, if anyone could think beyond the climbing degrees of London.

The weather girl monotoned about the temperature of the UK, in general. Scotland was failing to rain; crops were down. Sheep were mysteriously dying in Glencoe. Wales temperature had skyrocketed to a record breaking number. England was in dire straits.

Meanwhile, they were still preparing for the solar flares with less enthusiasm.

Q had hardly anything to mock on tv anymore; Silicone Tits was not as entertaining anymore, merely obnoxious, and the news grew less and less ridiculous and more somber.

**

The solar flares weren't solar flares. But by then, it was too hot to think of anything but water.

**

The reporter droned in his ear, ladies and gentlemen! Look at him go! The proper genius!

Silicone Tits moaned and whimpered, you weren't such a _good_ boy, were you?

**

It was the week before, when the breathy orgasm tit woman was replaced for gross misconduct whilst live on air (really, it wasn't her fault past piss poor planning at the surgeon's and a shoddy tailor).

It was the week before when Silicone Tits got replaced for Deep Voice Toupee. Q didn't know where the BBC got these people.

"Reports from Dr Fai-Lee Franklin, who is with me in the studio today, declare that these solar flares are not, in fact, flares but cause of the sun-" pregnant pause; oh joy, this one fancied himself a Shakespearean actor- "expanding. Dr Franklin, based on your truly awe-inspiring research, can you be sure the sun is truly…" dramatic pause. "Expanding?"

An elderly stern Asian-African American woman stared at him with a severe sneer on her ugly, flat face. "Yes."

Toupeed Shakespeare waited, for expansion. He didn't get any, so he moved on. "Any ideas on what might have caused this, based on the extensive research of you and your team?"

The woman didn't miss a goddamn beat. "Global warming."

Q tossed his head back and laughed for the first time in a long time. Oh, this was _gold._

**

A week after Flat-Face and Toupee, Q's air conditioning unit broke. The temperature outside was a stifling 38 degrees outside; not occasionally unusual for July in London, but cool in comparison to the other days.

The news that morning warned people to stay hydrated and inside, as air conditioning units were breaking everywhere from the exertion. They told people to buy fans. They told people to wear running bras and sleeveless vests.

He ran to Tesco for water and ice. Someone in the corner was holding a sign that read, in all caps, THE END IS HERE! REPENT!

Honestly, it was 38 degrees. Q wondered how many people had Rapture signs in, say, Arizona.

People were buying canned foods and dry goods by the trolley full. Entire families were buying mashed potatoes and pasta and canned soups and raviolis and frozen foods.

One mother with an infant emptied the entire milk section. Idiot, frankly; they all had the same expiration date.

One man pulled out a baton, Q suspected it looked like a bandleader's baton, and whacked another man across the head and knocked him out for reaching for the last apple on the shelf.

A goddamn apple.

Q grabbed as many gallons and bottles of water: sparkling water, flavoured water, bagged water, purified, distilled, spring, mountain, and valley water he could fill his trolley with and threw the first punch of his life as someone pulled out what Q suspected was a shiv in an effort to steal his plunder.

No one was paying for anything, so Q left.

Outside, he grabbed thirteen bags of ice: no one thought to get ice in a mayhem caused by mass world annihilation.

The next day, he went to the same Tesco to buy dried goods, but all that was left was a dusty chocolate bar and one box of whole wheat penne pasta.

**

Q woke up feeling like his mouth was sucked dry. His head throbbed, and he was dripping with sweat from the heat. His sheets were permeated with the smell of sleep and sweat.

It was hot. Even for the recent temperature spikes, it was hot.

He needed a shower. He needed water.

He took an ice cold shower and drank three bottles of water before moving to his laptop.  
It burned his fingers to the touch. He avoided the laptop, and moved to text MI6. His phone burned him to the touch. The remote's batteries melted inside the plastic casing. The TV was frazzled.

Every bit of technology strewn about his flat was too hot to the touch, burning in a familiar way that told Q: radioactive or just about to be.

His first words upon wakening on that fateful day were, "Well, _fuck_."

**

MI6 naturally was in a state of chaos when he arrived. So many people were running around, complaining about the heat, or the lost tech, or the not-quite solar flares.

He heard some receptionist say, "Global warming was a farce, wasn't it? That woman, Franklin, you think she's a Gore crony?"

To which someone replied: "Who fucking cares anymore, Sharon?"

Eloquently put. Yeah, Sharon, try to keep up.

Not a single piece of technology worked, and if it did, it was probably going to burn a hole through clothing or the desks from radioactivity.

Q's newscaster droned in his ear, you're absolutely fucked, England. Good luck.

M wanted to know what they could do, without technology.

"Honestly sir?" Q said, poking at a melted battery with the end of a stirring stick. "Fuck all, if you pardon my French. We can't bring back the agents gone into the field; planes are grounded. We can't contact them with anything but Morse, but good luck trying to find them a Naval or Air Force base that isn't going to the ground. We're stuck where we are." He looked at Eve, who was fanning herself. For the first time, he saw sweat stains on her clothing. He wondered what he looked like.

M sighed. "Miss Moneypenny, how many agents do we have here in London, at the moment?"

Q bristled. Without his tech, they'd have to resort to paper trails, and paper trails meant secretaries. Q was made, in that one simple sentence, obsolete.

Miss Moneypenny rifled through her neat stacks. "Field agents not in 00 position, we have Mathis, Fredericksburg, Garcia, and Samuels.

"Agents in 00 position, 003, 005, and 007. 003 was granted medical leave after Sumatra; she's in the infirmary."

Q walked out, leaving the apparently new Quartermaster and his boss deal with the papers.

He never liked paper cuts, or bruised pride.

**

They got used to the heat. To the longhand letters. To the never ending sweat. Dress code went out the window; women showed up in running shorts and sports bras while men showed up in white vests and loose gym shorts.

Q-branch became useless as people broke out the pens and paper and stamps. The underground labs became almost radioactive with the amount of technology practically melting the desks and floors.

So many people lost their jobs, so an influx of people losing their homes happened. The signs in the front of Tesco stopped proclaiming the rapture; they just begged mercy from the heat.

Hospitals became overcrowded by patients with heatstroke. Doctors warned patients as well as anyone who would listen to, please try not to get cut and expose your injuries to the hot sun, and to wear sunscreen, and to stop drinking soda, and start drinking water to maintain hydration. Eat things with low levels of grease and high levels of cancer fighting vitamins. Eat celery and cucumber for the hydration.

They were told to conserve water, and knock back their showers by a couple of minutes. Stop using so much hot water. Stop drinking caffeinated, hot beverages as the boiling water would make them lose weight faster.

They were told that sorry, we can't treat your newfound stage _two_ melanoma, all the medicine is being depleted by patients with stage _four_ newfound melanoma, but if you could wait over there, they'd get someone to look at them presently.

They were told that heatstroke was borderline deadly. Cuts were dangerous. They were told more and more people were dying.

Hospitals couldn't hold the amount of people. A&E became overcrowded to the point of cots in the hallways and patients waiting for shots and medicine holed up in toilet stalls.

The days grew impossibly hotter, and hotter.  
Q watched as less and less people walked into MI6, and more and more people were rushed out. Susan fainted! Tom died! That receptionist, what was her name? She's in Bart's, getting treated for stage four skin cancer that matastasized in a week.

Q started wearing shirts over his head to protect himself, and started wearing long sleeved shirts to protect his light olive tones. He acquired sunglasses and broke into people's houses when they were gone to steal sunscreen and water.

He cut his hair, his beautiful hair, to something a little longer than military regulation. In retaliation for having to sacrifice his one vanity, and in an effort to protect his face, he grew a beard.

He didn't recognise himself in the mirror.

**

He refused to become like them. He saw them out in the streets, slowly succumbing to the heat and the never ending god-forsaken sun.

They walked like a drove of mindless zombies, asking for water, for help, for shade. They stared with blank eyes and decaying skin, the ones cast out from jobs and hospital and home.

They lost their minds, staring with the same blank ferociousness of kicked and infected dogs.

Q watched as London lost its inhabitants, slowly, quietly.

The rapture placards stopped. Then, as if orchestrated, there was collective pandemonium. Murders, theft, rape. London became ungoverned, lawless, and feral.

Ladies and gentlemen, the mass London genocide of 2014 has begun! Wow, aren't you screwed, the newscaster exclaimed in Q's head, mercilessly loud in the face of his throbbing headache.

**

"Q… I don't feel good."

"No, no, Eve, come on! Eve! God _damn_ it, Eve Moneypenny! Help! Someone help! _God fucking damn it!_ "

**

He _refused_. He refused to lose his mind.

**

He met a man in an Asda who had moved into an abandoned Kensington flat.

He told Q, "Family there died. Living the high brow life, finally."

Q had smiled uncomfortably. "Yes, so it seems."

He grinned at Q, and it was then that Q noticed the man's shaking. Uncontrolled, to the point that his basket rattled where he held it.

Q asked, "Parkinson's?" It was normal, now, to talk of disease. Just like once it was normal to talk about the weather, or the game of footie the night before.

The man shook his head. "Protein. Too much of it, I think. Would you like to join me for dinner?"

Q winced. "No, not today, thank you." God, no. Never.

The man frowned. "You sure? She was always big boned when alive, good old Alicia. Why I married her, in fact. Woman could fill out a dress. She's for tonight."

With growing horror, Q realised the man had butchered and was feeding on his family.

Good old Tammy, his daughter, didn't have much on her in terms of meat, but she was good with a light salad and buttered bread. Roscoe tasted like the breed of dog he was, the four-legged piece of filth. Had to clean him twice to get the stench of dog out, and practically char him. Still tasted like shit. But Alicia, good old Alicia, I left her for last. Are you sure you won't join me?

Q ran out, half expecting the man to run out after him and kill him on the spot, and threw up.

Afterward, whilst he was tossing a salad, he morbidly thought it was just a different kind of incest, him eating his daughter.

**

He watched that Will Smith movie about the AI robots. He often wondered how amazingly brilliant it would be to live in an age where that was possible. Murderous robots, no, but robots with sentience.

He even dabbled, after watching that movie. Made ten robots and controlled them using an OS system in his laptop, but they never achieve full sentience to the point of self activation.

He often dreamed what life would be like in a robotic, fully electronic world.

He never expected, looking at the near empty streets of London, that his life would look eerily similar to another Will Smith movie.

All he needed was the fucking dog.

**

He always imagined that, in a lawless state of near-extinction, there would be more crime. But maybe it was the heat.

No one actually put effort into killing, after that brief stint of panic, unless it was for resources or shelter. Those that did made it obvious- they carried weapons and stared at people like they were going to blow at any moment.

It was the heat.

**

He greeted the new year, 2015. At least, he had a vague idea of it being 2015. He only assumed it was with eighty five percent certainty because he kept a calendar in one of those efforts to not lose his mind.

January 2015, it was too hot for the thermostat to pick up the temperature. He left his flat with an empty rucksack and some clean shirts. Routine, for water. It was time to search empty buildings for leftover water.

Buildings became homes, or graves, or sanctuary for small bundles of people who gathered together for either survival or death.

The smell of putrid, decayed flesh permeated every corner of Q's life, piling the streets and shops from a lack of animals left alive willing to brave the heat and scavenge.

He went to MI6. There was a surplus of water there; something everyone that still lived brought like a offering. Q was running out, and if he was to risk his life and health he was braving something he recognised.

MI6 had become something he didn't recognise.

The building was ransacked, papers strewn everywhere and desks overturned. Chairs had been thrown into and out of the building's windows. Someone left the lights on, stupidly, but broke the bulbs and the glass. Q had to duck as glass rained down occasionally from a sparking bulb.

He walked slowly, aware of possible people in here. While people certainly didn't waste energy killing, strangers encroaching territory made anyone rabid.

It was as he was kicking away a piece of splintered wood that he suspected came from a chair that he was slammed into from behind. A beefy, too-strong arm wrenched his own behind his back to the point of nearly breaking and pressed a gun to Q's temple.

There was breathing. The panicked, scared breathing of prey and the self-satisfied, calm breathing of a hungry predator.

Then, a voice gruff with disuse and possibly thirst but no less recognisable said, "Do you have water?"

"Oh, you've got to be fucking _kidding_ me." Q whined, no longer scared for his life and more annoyed.

007 snorted, but it sounded tired. "Not who you expected? Sorry to disappoint."

He loosened the pressure on Q's arm to let him up, but kept the gun trained on him. Paranoid bastard. Q raised his arms in a surrendering motion and said, "I don't have weapons."

Bond narrowed his eyes, but lowered the weapon. "I'll know if you lie to me," he warned.

"Of all the people to get stuck with. God must really hate me." Q growled, rubbing his shoulder.

Bond smirked. "Quartermaster."

Déjà vu hit Q like a ton of bricks, so he smirked right back. "007."

**

"Here," Bond threw him a dusty Walther from his stash of what looked like weapons, water, and cans of food.

Q caught it, and stared at it blankly. "I don't need it."

Bond raised an eyebrow. His face was rough with dirt and unshaven, but Q thought he must've had a razor somewhere, just like him; it's more two day stubble than jungle man beard. "Trust me, around here, you'll need it."

"I haven't gotten attacked yet. Granted, I almost got shanked the first week of this bloody mess, and then I got kicked when I accidentally broke into a home where the man was still there. And I got offered to join a cannibal for dinner; he was sautéing his wife that day. But I haven't gotten attacked enough to justify a gun."

Q found himself unable to stop talking. He had been mouthy before, with sarcasm and snark, but now it was almost like floodgates. Q talked; about the first week and how he woke up to his laptop melted and Silicone Tits and Toupeed Shakespeare and Dr Franklin with her global warming. He talked about his calendar, and the storage of water in his flat that was quickly being depleted.  
He told Bond about the white washed wallpaper, places where the sun bleached the pattern. He asked Bond about how he wasn't usually this emaciated, hasn't he been eating?

Bond allowed it, with a bored look and shaking hands. Finally, at the end of Q's tirade, he said, "I'm heading south. To the ocean. Might be cooler there, I could find shelter and survive."

"Are you alone?" Q asked, catching eye of 003's red aluminium water bottle and a couple of other knick knacks that didn't belong to Bond. Q didn't want to form the picture he was forming, but Bond shrugged.

"Yeah, I suppose. I wasn't, but well." He sniffed. "They turned on me." He stared at Q then, boring holes into his very soul. "It was the last thing they did."

Q shivered. Threat given, threat, "Understood."

**

They started walking.

Q didn't have much but the water bottles he brought, filled again, and the extra shirts for protection. In his hand, he carried the gun Bond had bequeathed to him, and tucked away between the shirts was a Swiss Army knife the paranoid idiot threw at him.

Bond was more prepared.

He had three different first aid kits filled with hospital grade medicine and supplies, and an arsenal of different weapons. He had about five water bottles and several cans of food.

They walked south, according to a map and a compass Bond had found whilst ransacking the ancient archives of Six left from Boothroyd's days.

"I tried my hand at horses once," Q said as they walked around the decomposing body of a woman half baked. "Won twenty thousand pounds."

Bond didn't spare him a glance. "Dumb luck?"

Q grinned. His eyes stung from the glare and the sweat running down into his lashes. "I rigged it, of course. Had to pay for uni somehow."

Bond frowned at him in curiousity. Q looked at him and looked away quickly. Shrugged. "You weren't talking, so I picked a subject."

"Maybe you shouldn't talk either," Bond said after a while. Q couldn't find it in him to be offended.

There was a piece of rubbish on the road, which on closer inspection was a piece of roadkill, which on closer inspection was what was left of a human baby.

Q wrinkled his nose. Bond merely walked over it without a word. "There was a reason babies were abandoned first," he growled out when Q looked back to see it fading into the middle distance.

They stayed to the woods surrounding the motorways and roads. What little shade there was was better than walking in pure sunlight, and Bond was paranoid about walking in direct view, with no shelter or vantage points.

Q really was starting to feel the sun a bit too hot.

**

"You're positive you know where you're going?"

"I've a map. And a compass."

"But do you _know_? Or are you just dallying?"

"Is there a difference, now?"

No, Q didn't much think there was.

**

They found a house after what felt like miles of walking. They had depleted seven water bottles, and filled three up with slightly muddy water from a pond.

The house was old, and had fallen into disrepair, but still standing. Q thought it would've looked quaint, in a different life.  
Bond said, "Find supplies. Food, water, meds, weapons."

Q rolled his eyes. "007, you're practically a walking American gun show. I don't think you need more."

"They're not for me," Bond replied gruffly as he kicked the door open. The smell immediately made Q's eyes water and bile rise up in his throat. Bond looked unflappable. "You need more than a Walther and knife."

Q grabbed a shirt and held it to his nose. Following Bond inside, he moved to the rooms where the smell diminished by micro amounts and looted around for anything they could use.

He found rubbing alcohol, hydrogen peroxide, toothbrushes and toothpaste, breath mints, two boxes of plasters that were unopened, over the counter paracetamols, allergy medication, tampons, condoms, KY lube, nail clippers, a comb, q-tips, bars of soap and body wash that doubled as shampoo.

He took it all.

Walking inside the bedrooms upstairs, he heaved a heavy breath through his nose in an effort not to breathe in the putrid stench.

It was balmy up here. He grabbed portable fans and shirts and shoes and clean pants.

He saw a Bible open to the book of Psalms, with a highlighted verse, but didn't bother reading it.

Bond was downstairs, packing cans of soup and boxes of crisps. Q caught sight of biscuits that were unopened in the pantry, and suddenly, he felt uneasy.

"Why leave all this stuff? I found medicine and toiletries upstairs, you found biscuits. Why leave all this and go?" Q asked, stuffing the chocolate hobnobs into his rucksack.

Bond stopped packing and looked at him. "They didn't leave. They're in the sitting room."

Q blanched. Moving to the sitting room, he craned his neck to look and began dry heaving. "Oh god. Oh god, oh god, oh god. What the _hell_?"

There was a family sitting on the sofa. An entire fucking family, _dead_ , baking in a house.

Q looked out of the corner of his eye. The dad was hugging what might have been a little boy, from the clothing they didn't even bother taking off. On the armchair nearby the mother clutched an infant to her mouldy, decaying bosom, and had her head turned to the men of her family.

The cat on the windowsill was the icing on the damn cake.

"The heat drove them mad," Bond murmured as he stood by Q. "Like your cannibal."

Q felt sick. "This is digusting. Why didn't they just leave, the poor bastards."

Bond, who had turned back to his own rucksack, swivelled quickly and grabbed him by the arm. He looked positively rabid as he hissed, "They are not poor anything, Q. They went insane; they decided to stay; they died. The minute you start asking yourself questions like that is the day _you_ go insane.

"The day you start looking at infants decaying on the road, or families holed up in their homes being baked into moulding flesh and see actual _people_ is the day you go insane.

"We are not people anymore, Quartermaster. We're survivors. We're what's left. Vampires and zombies and animal hybrids. The moment you start caring and crying over the weak is the moment I shoot you in the head. We steal to live, we kill to survive. We don't look back. And we don't question.

"If you tag along with me, keep that in mind."

It was the only time Q had ever heard Bond speak more than three sentences at once, and it was to cement what was once MI6's view of 00 agents all being psychopaths. He hated him at that moment. He hated him for proving everyone right. He exclaimed, "What the fuck is _wrong_ with you?"

"I'm trying to outlive everyone." Bond's reply was given to the rucksack, where he was furiously packing ravioli. It would have been funny in another time, maybe, Bond holding canned ravioli with a pissed off expression. "I don't have time for liabilities who don't know how to defend themselves and can't be smart when the entire universe fucking gives up on them. There was a reason children were abandoned first; they were useless."

Q's hands shook with rage and disgust and pity and he wanted to kill Bond, he wanted to murder him for what he was hearing spew out of his mouth. "You're a disgrace of a human being, James Bond."

Bond didn't talk to him for days after that, but that was fine. Q didn't want to hear anything the man had to say.

**

They met a group walking parallel to them once, while they rested for a few days before setting off again.

They offered water, in trade for canned ravioli for the children. Bond gave it to them after double checking they were not armed, and even then only allowed one person to get the food.

The man who spoke sat nearer to Q. He said, "We've come from London; we left just after the fires."

"Fires?" Q asked.

The man frowned. He looked emaciated, and for a brief moment Q wondered what he himself looked like before willing the thought away.

The man murmured, "We thought you knew," and in a louder voice said, "The homes and flats, they're all catching fire. Wallpaper, stoves, wires, electrical sockets… blazing like wildfire. Everyone evacuating. Well," he looked towards the children ravenously sucking down cold Chef Boyardee ravioli in meat sauce. "Everyone left alive, in any case. Where are you heading?"

Bond cut in, swallowing a large gulp of water and making a point of pointing to the kids with the knife he used to cut the can. "We don't have enough supplies for stragglers. We're going away, that's all you're learning."

**

Q wondered, in the moments Bond threw a shirt over his eyes for shade and napped with his hand curled around his gun, what exactly happened in MI6 all those days ago.

People didn't just lose their sanity like that.

Did they?

**

Would he?

**

James Bond had thin hazy pink lips that cracked in the sun and became white around the edges and center. There was a clean, red line where the wet of his mouth ended and when that dried, it pasted his mouth together so when Bond had to drink water, he grimaced and opened his mouth to peel his lips apart first.

James Bond had wrinkles in his forehead from frowning at the sun, craggy lines Q could probably dip his finger in and lose half of it in the folds of skin.

James Bond had a nose that spoke of several breaks, but only two actual medicated sets.

James Bond became a face. He stopped being a name, because Q didn't have to call him by it to get attention; all he had to do was lift his voice, ask for water.

Water became their name.

James Bond became symbolic with the cleaning of dust from a gun; the sharp atonal screech of a can being cut with a knife, which then got sharpened with a rock. James Bond became stony silence and penetrating stares designed to intimidate or console, Q didn't quite know.

It was funny how Q decided to see all of this now, now that he hated the man.

None of it mattered when they walked. And they walked nonstop, it seemed. Q stopped holding his gun in his hand because that made his companion keep glancing at him like he was waiting for Q to snap and try and kill him.

Maybe Q was. About to snap, that is.

***

"I thought it wouldn't be this bad. Just solar flares, you know. Some EMPs, maybe an eclipse," Bond said one day/night they were trying to sleep under the shade of a leafless tree. "Then this bloody mess happened. So I holed up with others in Six. We became a family, of sorts. More than we already were.

"We were the ones that never left. Everyone else went to find medicine or whatever. We plundered Six for what we needed. Have you read _Lord of the Flies_?"

Q said he had, in fourth form. He hated it.  
Bond snorted. "You would hate it. Well, that was us. We slowly started going mad with the heat and the frustration. So we started mutinies."

"You killed them," Q whispered. It sounded like an accusation.

Bond sat up and stood in one fluid movement, grabbed his pack, and began walking again. "I was one of the first they went for. I'm trying to outlive everyone."

Q suddenly wanted to find the Atlantic, just so he could throw Bond in before he decided to outlive Q.

**

They had found a small pond, a miracle really, as houses had been growing scarce and even with the trade from days ago, water quantities were growing smaller and smaller.

Q was about fifty paces away from Bond, on moral principle and self-preservation.

Bond was turned away from him, bent at the waist and elbows bent like a mutated crane, holding two water bottles by the neck in his mouth as he filled up more.

"That water couldn't possibly be clean," Q muttered, seemingly to himself, but Bond must've heard him because he stood suddenly with an angry expression.

He growled, "You're the Quartermaster; do you have any better ideas for clean water?"  
Q bristled, but knew Bond had a point. He shook his head softly and turned away to give the man maybe some privacy.

It was from the sparse yet dense foliage they crawled out of. She looked to be in her early thirties, with a wild and unhinged look in her eye. She was filthy, torn and bleeding and bruised in multiple places on her body, and smelled of rotting flesh.

She could've been pretty maybe. Under all the filth and blood, she had a strong Greek nose and blue eyes, with matted and manged black hair. Bond probably would've thought her beautiful enough for a martini in a bar, or something. Now, she just looked like a kicked, injured dog.

Her daughter was trailing after her, limping and whining like a dog. She kept complaining in a low voice; mummy it hurts, mummy my head, mummy I want water.

The woman looked from Q to Bond to Q again and, deciding Q was either closer or safer, she hobbled to him.

"Please," she whispered. "Help us. Water, we need water."

Her voice sounded like what gravel would sound like going through a lead blower. Blood dribbled down her chin through the corners of her dry lips. There was a gaping hole right below her right clavicle that was excreting frothy blood and yellow puss. With shaking hands, she reached out and grabbed Q's shirt with an iron grip.

Her knuckles cracked and bled upon flexing.

"Please," she wheezed and Q winced. He grabbed her wrists, refusing to acknowledge the papery texture that practically disintegrated in his hands and tried to dislodge her, but she merely dug her nails in, dirty and ingrown. "Please!" She repeated louder.

The little girl kept crying. Mummy, my leg. Mummy, my throat. Mummy, I'm thirsty.

There was a reason children got left behind, Q thought uselessly. Shut up, little girl, god you're annoying.

The newscaster droned in his ear, tonight on BBC1, a London man murdered a little girl because she wouldn't stop crying!

Where in the fuck was _Bond_ , goddamn it?

He slammed his foot down on hers and shook her off, but she grew rabid. With a screech, she jumped him, screaming bloody murder about needing water. Q watched the blood around her mouth froth with saliva and blood and gagged when the puss from her wound rubbed against his cheek and temple. The smell of burning, rotting flesh was everywhere.

There was a gunshot, then a blood curdling scream from the girl cut short by another gunshot. Q pushed the dead woman off of him and sucked in air greedily.

Bond was looking at him with something close to disgust. His lip was bared in a sneer, while his eyes spoke of murder and distaste. He didn't need to say it. Q knew.

There was a reason children and infants and the elderly were left behind.

Q wiped the puss off his face and stared dispassionately at the bodies. "I need a drink of water."

"Where's your fucking gun?"

"Rucksack."

Bond snorted. "Get it, and don't let go of it again. This is the last time I save you."

**

"Where are we?"

"Close."

**

Bond, Q mused unhappily, had been outliving everyone around him his entire life.

He outlived his parents when he was but a child. He outlived so many of his fellow Navy men and women in an explosion that should've incinerated him. He outlived the previous 007, who had only been an agent for three years before getting shot and bleeding out. He outlived Vesper. He outlived all those women and conquests and sometimes, he outlived the assets he was sent to retrieve. He outlived every single one of the baddies he was sent to kill, although sometimes it was a close call. He outlived Boothroyd, who was involved in the Silva explosion. He outlived Silva. He outlived M herself.

He outlived Eve, and Mallory, and so many people in this hellish time.

Maybe another time, Q would've felt sympathy for all the loss. Maybe he would've tried to become closer to Bond, because lord knows he needed something constant in his life.

Now, Q walked and ate and slept with a finger curled around his trigger. Q was determined to become the link that broke the chain.

**

"Do we have any more food?"

Bond rummaged around his rucksack, threw Q a can of tomato soup with two hobnobs and then sighed. "We'll run out soon. We need to pit stop to any building that might have food."

"Where are we?" Q asked, taking out his Swiss Army knife to saw through the can's lid.

Bond looked at the motorway a couple of paces away. "South."

Q frowned, stopping in his sawing. Was he serious? "South. South. Right. No, well, that's just grand. Really specific there, 007, honestly. _Where_ south?"

Bond rolled his eyes. "I'm heading to the Atlantic, everywhere else has stopped being names and more landmarks. And those landmarks are usually homes with food."

Q wiped his sweaty brow. "The very same homes that are apparently catching fire?"

Bond nodded. Q sighed, and muttered, "Great," as he tipped the jagged piece of aluminium into his mouth. The tomato soup was cold, watery on the top, and tasted like bile.

Five star dining.

**

"That's… odd."

Q looked over at Bond, surprised that Bond said something, before following his gaze. He raised his eyebrows. "Very odd. What do you think is in there?"

It was a warehouse building, torn and scrapped but melded together again. The entrance of the warehouse was what looked like an old garage door, rusted over in places and hanging from almost broken hinges. Beyond that, there was a silence.

"Should we investigate?" Q asked. "There could be food. Water. At the very least, it's shade."

"Ask yourself…" Bond murmured, walking up behind him. Q tried not to flinch and squeeze his gun tighter on reflex, but didn't quite manage it. Bond noticed, but continued, "why is there one warehouse here, and one over there, completely boarded up and holed up from everything?"

He pointed to another warehouse about a mile away, where Q could vaguely notice there were boards and aluminium sheets covering every hole.

There was a rustle behind the tree, and both Q and Bond had their guns up and ready before a man carrying a machete popped out from behind a tree. " _Good_ question! I was watching you two walk up, all the way from over there."

Bond tensed, scoping out the perimeter. Q cocked the gun. The man raised his arms in surrender. With a small, wry grin, he said, "I don't suppose there's much hope of you just listening to me when I tell you both you can trust me."

"Not really, no. I don't even trust him," Q tilted his head towards Bond, who snorted. "So tell us why we should trust you."

The man said, "Name's Razor. No, it's not my real name; my real name's Alfonse."

"Don't blame us," Bond muttered; Q grinned.

Razor bared his teeth. "Yes, well, now you know why I go by Razor, then don't you?"

Bond lowered his gun a fraction. "What's in there?"

Razor followed his gaze to the holed up warehouse. Then he sighed, almost sadly. "Quarantine. After The Event, anything small: colds, fever, sore throat… it grew. There's a plague ravaging the land."

"So you just hole them up in there?" Q asked. His stomach churned.

Razor nodded once. Then he smiled with his yellowed teeth, big and sharp like a rat's. "What else would you have us do? It's a bloody sickness; can't have everyone die on us. Separate the weak, survival of the fittest in action, man; Darwin would be proud."

Bond cut in, shouldering his pack. "We do not wish to stay. We merely need food, if you've got it, and water."

Razor raised an eyebrow. "Oh. Oh, yeah, no, that's no problem."

Q frowned sceptically. "Really?"

"Oh, yeah, course. Lots of food here. Water too; we created a system that purifies water using coal and rocks." Razor continued, smartly not moving from the spot he was in even though he had tensed. "In fact, we'll give you the barrel. The whole jug full."

Bond hissed. "There's no need for sarcasm."

Razor blinked. "Do you know how many people we've got in there? Why should we open our doors to two haggard strangers? Who might be sick? Dangerous?" He pointed with the machete to the guns. "Armed?"

Q raised his gun, still primed. "All we need is a couple of cans of food and some water."

"Are you armed? In there? Beyond machetes?" Bond asked.

Razor frowned in confusion. "No. None of us had guns when we grouped up; we don't need them."

Q didn't even blink as Bond shot the man in the shoulder once, watching dispassionately as he fell to the ground in agony. Bond stepped up and crouched low. "Now, tell us," he threatened lowly. "Where your food is. We only need a little bit."

"It's inside…" Razor whined. "Pantry on the left."

They took food, water, weapons, medicinal supplies, a book, and a small tent. Q watched as the women hunkered down with their children whilst the men, armed only with chain saws and larger knives, stared in something that looked like defeat.

Q watched the people. It looked like Hooverville, moved into a warehouse. Tents upon tents stacked one on top of another. Some people were crawling out of crates. They were all filthy.

The grand regression of civilisation.

A little girl wandered up to Q, and reached out to touch his hand. Her mother gasped in horror, staring at Q as if he was going to blow her head off for that. Q just stepped aside and turned back to pilfering.

As they walked off, Q burned to see the disease. The plague Razor spoke of. But Bond was already twenty paces ahead, and the smell was too much for Q to bear.

**

"When we get there…" Bond wheezed. "When we get there, I'm throwing myself in."

Q guzzled water, closing his eyes at half mast in pathetically short lived relief. "I'll toss you in, if you want."

Bond shook his head. "Nah. You're dying first."

Q blinked away the ghosts lingering in his peripheral vision. Eve, his mother, Mallory, his flatmate's cat, the reporters. They were all there, watching him with sunken cheeks and bruised eyes.

"You know something? Maybe I will."

**

Q pitched the tent up and laid outside. They took turns, see, and it was Bond's turn now. It had been Bond's turn for three days in a row, but that was fine.

Q sat watching Eve. She smiled her little knowing smile at him. "I'm not here." She remarked blithely. Then she laughed cruelly and smirked at him, saying, "You're going insane, finally."

"Maybe," Q whispered. Bond was sleeping; he had to stay silent. "Is that so bad, insanity? You went insane before you died."

She hummed. They heard Bond toss and turn in the tent, before she frowned. "I kept seeing my da. Fucking creep. Should I be flattered you see me?"

Q sighed. "No, I see Silva sometimes too. He laughs at me. And I see Silicone Tits, but she just moans obscenely."

She laughed delightedly, which made her rotting jaw come undone in places. Patches of skin were falling off her face and arms.  
She exclaimed, "Silicone Tits? Who's that then, Q?"

"She's right behind you."

Silicone Tits popped out her fake cleavage, rotting and moulded. She showcased them, arching her back lewdly. "Solar flares, Q." She breathed with a half erotic sigh. "They're _c-c-coming_."

Q sneered in disgust. That damn word coming from her damn mouth. Disgusting.

Silva was there, in the back, jaw unhinged like a snake about to swallow a goat whole. His face was without the prosthetic, so he looked like a demon from hell.

He shouted, "Life clings to us all, does it not, my clever boy?"

Q shut his eyes and prayed, for the first time in his life, to any god still looking down on him for them to leave him in peace.

**

He told himself he wouldn't go insane.

He refused to go insane, damn it.

**

The wind was getting harder, the air lighter to breathe. They were almost there, probably two towns over.

Q coughed once. Twice. Then, he couldn't stop, and had to bend at the waist to brace himself against the pain of coughing. It felt wet, like he was hacking up a lung.

He uncovered his mouth and stared in horror at his sleeve. Bond looked at it and sighed. Then he kept walking.

"It's started, I suppose. Don't lag behind; I'm not slowing down," he called out to Q.

Q felt his eyes water. "Shit. Shit, shit, shit."

His sleeve was crimson red with blood, and his mouth tasted heavy and metallic.

**

He walked, chewing pills and drinking liquid medicine like a man possessed. He refused to die before he saw the bloody Atlantic. He wanted to watch Bond throw himself in, he wanted to watch Bond's lungs fill with water and watch him sink to the bottom with a face frozen in regretful horror.

He wanted to be the one that could say, I outlived the immortal James fucking Bond. Me, Quartermaster of MI6; I did that.

**

"I may die first, but at least I lost my mind last."

**

They could smell the salt in the air, now. They couldn't hear the waves, but they could smell the briny scent of heated salt water. It intoxicated them and made them drunk with anticipation.

Q stumbled on, weak and cold and shivering. Bond, true to his word, merely walked on. Q held his gun tightly; Bond was lately staring at him with a bleak desperation. The look of an emaciated dog staring through the window of a butcher's shop.

It wasn't a look of hatred anymore, or disgust, or murderous intent. It was raw animal need, and Q hated it.

He looked at Bond the same way too; he could feel it. There was a churning in his gut and a buzzing in his lizard brain whenever Bond tightened his gun in an effort not to reach for Q and throttle him until the light in his eyes dimmed and his face turned purple; or tear his clothes and bite and suck and rip and tear in frustration.

Q knew that; Q felt that as well.

It was almost anticlimactic, then, when Bond jumped him.

He was turned away, because Bond had yet again claimed the tent for himself and he was listening to his mother sing in French.

He felt it more than saw it; felt Bond snake his fingers in his newly grown hair and pull ferociously, to the point of tears.

Q accepted the bitten kiss, Bond smearing his chapped, dry, and sticky lips on his mouth and jaw and cheek, huffing messily through his nose.

Q grabbed his own fistful of hair, longer and shaggier than he'd ever seen it, and yanked, silencing Bond's enraged snarl and biting a chunk of scruffy chin.

Bond's hands tore and ripped clothing, pinched emaciated skin and nipples. Q hissed as Bond pinched a nipple and twisted to the point of bad pain, before clawing his cheek down to his neck. It drew blood, and Bond roared, pushing off of Q only to slam his forearm on his waist and latch his mouth to his neck, biting and sucking and rolling skin through his teeth, growling and snuffling wildly all the while.

He rutted against Q's thigh hard, more harsh presses of enlarged cock against leg muscle than rolling, rhythmic thrusts. Q scratched hot, red, angry welts on his back down to his buttocks and squeezed the mounds of flesh with nails bared. Bond tightened his bite on Q's body where neck and shoulder met and scratched his own lines down Q's chest, stopping just before he scratched Q's cock.

They had regressed into animals; a bitch In heat being mounted by a hormone driven beast, rendered pliant by an unyielding bite to the neck.

He grabbed Q's cock with an iron grip that bordered on excruciating and Q cried out, shutting his eyes. In retaliation to the unyielding grip and pull on his dick, he stiffened two fingers and without ceremony jammed them as far as they'd go into Bond's arsehole.

Bond pulled back with a pained and angry roar, let go of Q's cock, and stared at Q with surprise and hate and need and animal lust. Q heaved a breath as he rolled to get away.

"The next time," Q gasped, feeling out of breath and hot with rage and sexual frustration. "The next time you try to rip my cock off, I'm jamming my gun as far down your throat as I can, and I will shoot you while smiling, you goddamn son of a bitch." Q hissed, standing and walking off.

His whole body hurt. His erection was painful in more ways than one. He was bleeding from Bond's bites and scratches.

He had never felt so alive in so damn long.

**

"Come on, come on, _come on_."

Q let out a whine and came, hard, shivering and shaking. Bond jerked himself off, after, and didn't miss a beat before tucking himself in and starting to walk again.

**

Bond's ejaculate. His semen. His spunk. Jizz. Sperm.

Christ, there wasn't a word out there for ejaculate that didn't sound incredibly awkward, was there?

Q started giggling madly as he thought up, cock juice medley. Bond frowned unattractively at him.

And see, that was the problem. Bond wasn't attractive to Q. Sure, he was an attractive man, but he wasn't attractive to Q as a partner.

Q didn't like the largeness of Bond. All of Q's partners, female or male, had all been tall and willowy and practically elfin in their movements. Darker, like him. Wiry, whipcord strong male thighs and thin arms, the figure of dancers and acrobats and gymnasts.

His last girlfriend had been a ballerina; his last boyfriend, a trapeze swinger.

He liked the lithe, tall shapes of ethereal fae, not the brusque, heavy set figure of a fighter and killer and hired gun.

Before this, Q hadn't thought twice about him. But now, Bond was the only one left. So he had no choice but to ruminate on Bond's cock, and testes, and the texture and colour of his sperm. He had no choice but to think about how Bond's cock's head flushed a dusky pink when erect instead of Q's own reddish hue, and how it had the tendency to turn to the left, instead of Q's, which curved upward.

Bond was an average six and some inches, but thicker than Q. He had a crotch full of tight golden pubic hair that might've at one point been groomed nicely. His testicles hung quite nicely, although the left one was slightly bigger than the other and the line down the middle separating the two wasn't straight, like Q's.

His cock juice medley was bitter, like ammonia. Q remembered when he once liked the taste and feel of a cock sliding smoothly between his tongue and roof of his mouth. He once liked how he could feel the skin tighten as he gave just the barest hint of teeth. How the balls would tighten as he rolled them through his fingers and nip the looser skin between his lips.

Now, it all tasted like ash. Sometimes blood, if his coughing was particularly bad that day.

**

"Life clung to me like a disease," Silva gargled in his distorted, deformed speech right in Q's face, breath blowing out into Q's ear and smelling of coconuts and fire.

Q laughed wetly as blood spurted from his nose and mouth, puking up iron and metal twice before lying down with a shiver.

Q asked, "Why don't you just kill me?"

Bond stayed silent for a while, enough for Q to almost fall asleep, and then said, "I don't want to be alone."

He was still such a selfish bastard.

**

"I _refuse_ to die without seeing you die first, goddamn it. I will fucking witness you drown if I have to push you in myself."

Silence.

"I hate you. So much. I fucking hate you. All this shit is your fault. Your fucking fault. I would've been fine in London, damn it. But I had to follow Piggy, didn't I? Fucking _Lord of the Flies_ indeed."

Silence.

"Are you listening to me? I refuse to die first. I will outlive God himself if you two were the last beings on earth, only to watch you die. I want to watch you die! You bastard!"

Silence.

"Goddamn it. It hurts. Everything hurts. Look, I'm _fucking_ peeling. My goddamn _skin_ is coming off. I look like a leper."

Silence.

"I told myself I wouldn't go insane. That my brain would be protected. I couldn't go insane."

Silence.

"Why won't you just kill me? Hmm? Just take your gun, and kill me? I won't commit suicide, I won't. My mum committed suicide, and my dad. I refuse to commit suicide. So it's got to be you, okay? You've got to do it. Stop being a selfish bastard, and put me out of my misery."

Silence.

**

They ran out of water. Ran out of food. Q ran out of pills.

The ocean water permeated their very marrow, and the idea of death left them muttering to themselves in sweet ecstacy.

**

The Atlantic was balmy, like a tropical island, and hot like a desert.

The waves were small, since the moon was diminished and nighttime never came anymore. The salt was thick on their tongue from evaporation.

Q had dried blood on his shirt, and chin, and cheeks. When he opened his mouth, a blood bubble burst and showered down on the ground.

Bond asked, "What do we dedicate our deaths to?"

Q closed his eyes, feeling as his body shut down little by little. He smiled the serene smile of the dying, and tilted his face to the welcome arid breeze. "To the sunset that'll never come again."

**

Ladies and gentlemen, good evening and welcome to the evening news. Tonight, we bring you the ending of an era, the dehumanisation of civilisation, a world torn to flame and dust, and a never ending excruciating torture.

But don't worry, Susie McCormack won the fucking science award!

**Author's Note:**

> There was a dearth of apocalypse 00Q fics, so I wrote my own take on it, and ended with almost ten thousand words of world annihilation.  
> Any political, religious, and social views seen here are in no way intended to offend or mock, and are not an accurate description of the author's personal views.  
> Title is from Tolstoy's quote, which reads, "All his life was concentrated in one feeling, suffering, and the ardent desire to be freed from it."  
> As for any Americanisms, I am a born Brit who moved to Florida and have lived here for the past ten years. While I've certainly retained a lot of my own home traditions and wordage, anything I've let slip are things I've simply forgotten and hope can be pardoned.


End file.
